


When Did All the Years Go By?

by crackerscheese



Category: Fake News, Fake News RPF
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 05:50:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4423799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackerscheese/pseuds/crackerscheese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon had thought that seeing a younger version of himself might make him a little nostalgic, but he didn’t count on being downright depressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Did All the Years Go By?

Jon looked up at the stars, the same stars he had been under sixteen years ago. He sighed. The air of New York City was freezing cold, so different from the heat of June that he was dressed for, and for a moment he didn’t feel guilty for stealing the coat he had seen lying on a bench in Central Park. He leaned back against the brick wall and watched as people passed him on the sidewalk.

They didn’t even glance at him. Sometimes he forgot how it felt to be a nobody.

Beside him, Stephen was holding up a piece of paper with one hand and writing with the other, cursing every few minutes when his pen slipped from his numb fingers. Stephen was even more improperly dressed for this than Jon: he wore a t-shirt and khakis while Jon had had the sense to wear a worn-down pair of sweatpants. 

All of Stephen’s focus was on the paper in front of him. He squinted as he tried to write under the little light the streetlamps above them gave off. His back was hunched over, and Jon predicted that he would have a nasty cramp whenever they got back to the year they belong to. Jon knew Stephen was feeling the most miserable out of the two of them, but he didn’t know how much until after the pen fell onto the pavement for the fifth time and he realized that Stephen was shivering. Hard.

Now Jon wished he had stolen two jackets, not one. 

“Stephen, maybe you can wear my coat for a little while…” Jon said, already shrugging off the coat that was one size too big for him. Stephen had already crouched down on the sidewalk, and when he looked up at Jon, his nose was runny and his skin was pale. The sight sucked the amusement of the idea of Stephen looking up at him for once, but only for a moment.

Stephen shook his head vehemently. “No, you need it for your disguise, remember?” Jon got a glimpse of Stephen’s glare as he turned his attention back to the letter. Jon knew Stephen’s iciness was mostly directed at the cold and not him; Stephen knew he needed to see this, especially before he retired. Jon zipped up the coat completely and threw the hood up, effectively wrapping himself in a cotton cocoon as he looked across the street.

At the _Daily Show_ studio. The future _Colbert Report_ studio, in six years.

As soon as he realized that they had accidentally ended up in 1999, he had begged Stephen to stop by here before they had to go back to their own time. Twenty minutes had passed by before Jon cursed. He had thought he had gotten his schedule correct, but it has been twenty years since he has had to remember it. He hoped he at least got the hour right, he didn’t want Stephen to freeze to death in the wrong century. 

Jon was about to resort to counting the cracks in the sidewalk when the door to the studio opened. Thoughts about Stephen’s well-being faded as he focused on the scene playing out in front of him. Hours after the rest of the staff, Jon Stewart stumbled out, the door clanging closed as his hands were preoccupied with wrapping his scarf around his neck. 

Jon was almost surprised at how young he looked, it was odd not seeing the gray hair and laugh lines he saw every time he looked in the mirror. Jon hailed a taxi, and the older Jon watched him in silence as he climbed in. It was only when the cab started to drive off when the thought struck him: _When did all the years go by?_ Jon could clearly remember being the guy in the cab, youthful and full of energy, but there were almost twenty years between them, and it showed.

Jon had thought that seeing a younger version of himself might make him a little nostalgic, but he didn’t count on being downright depressed. 

He tracked the cab until it disappeared around the corner, imagining it was his youth that was disappearing before him, when Stephen spoke. 

“Depressing, isn’t it?” Jon dragged his eyes away from the street corner to turn to look at him. Stephen, who had abandoned writing his letter in favor of staring at Jon in sympathy. “That’s why I didn’t look for my younger self. I knew it would upset me, if I saw...” _How much time had passed by_ went unsaid, and Jon tried to look away from the complete understanding that was in Stephen’s eyes by glancing instead at the paper in Stephen’s hands.

“Are you finished?” Jon asked, gesturing to the letter. 

“Yeah, just need to sign it.”

Neither of them acknowledged the sudden change of subject. 

“You need to sign it too,” Stephen added as he stuck the letter onto the wall and tattooed it with his signature.

Jon nodded, and shoved his frozen fingers into his coat pockets. He had already written his portion of the letter, and it still hurt his brain to think that what he wrote would somehow end up in Stephen’s hands sixteen years later, and that while they are signing it a faded version of the letter was crammed in Stephen’s pocket. 

Stephen was about to hand the pen and paper over to him when Jon started to take off his coat. The danger of ripping a hole in the space-time continuum was gone, and Jon didn’t like the way Stephen’s teeth were chattering. Stephen began to protest, but when Jon commanded, “Take it,” he eagerly took the coat and wrapped himself in its warmth.

Jon took the pen, and within seconds his name in his messy scrawl was printed on the letter. He pocketed the letter and turned to Stephen, who was rubbing his hands together furiously. “Back to the Ed Sullivan Theater, then?”

“I guess so,” Stephen said before leading the way down the street and into the heart of New York City. “We need to leave the letter and jump back through the portal quickly. It might disappear and leave us here,” he said over his shoulder.

“Yeah, but it probably won’t do that within the hour,” Jon said as he jogged to catch up to Stephen. “Do you think we’ll have enough time to catch a taping of Letterman?”


End file.
